World

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why Macron wants to put French schoolkids back in uniform

The details of King Charles’ state visit to France later this month were announced on Wednesday. His Majesty’s deputy private secretary, Chris Fitzgerald said that the occasion state will celebrate the countries’ ‘shared histories, culture and values’. One thing France and Britain haven’t shared for many years is the same view on school uniform. We wear it, they don’t, although they might be about to change.   In an interview on Monday, Emmanuel Macron agreed that school uniform may be the best way to avoid any future controversies about what children wear to schools in France.  He was referring to the furore that erupted last week when his new Minister of

Thursday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Joe Biden really running again? 

Will President Joe Biden be on the ballot in the presidential election of 2024? It’s a question that Biden seemed to answer four months ago when he announced, in an online video, that he would be running for re-election next year. ‘Let’s finish this job,’ he said. ‘Because I know we can.’  Three-quarters of Americans say they’re ‘seriously concerned’ about Biden’s mental and physical competence to do the job Team Biden must have hoped that, after making that announcement, the doubts surrounding his bid for re-election would go away. As the polls increasingly show Donald Trump cruising towards a re-nomination for the Republican ticket, America appears then to be heading

Wednesday

John Keiger John Keiger

How Africa fell out of love with France

On Wednesday last week, a new Gabonese military junta installed itself, having ousted President Ali Bongo, whose family have ruled the country since 1967. Just two days earlier, the French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech to his ambassadors in which he spoke of an ‘epidemic of putschs’ in what was formerly France’s greatest sphere of post-colonial influence. Although most of these states have been independent for decades, Paris kept them firmly in the French orbit There have now been six coups d’état in francophone sub-Saharan Africa in three years – Mali, Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger and now the small but wealthy nation of Gabon. France’s whole African policy

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Banning Iran’s IRGC makes more sense than cracking down on Wagner

Is the Wagner Group a terror threat to Britain? Until this morning, the thought had probably never occurred to most people as they went about their lives. The mercenary group has indeed done terrible things in Ukraine and Africa. But a threat to British subjects on our own soil? Today, however, the government will add Wagner to its list of proscribed organisations, which includes groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda. This means that joining or supporting the organisation carries a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. Officials will be able to seize Wagner’s assets more easily, and members of the group will be barred from silencing journalists and

Douglas Murray

The delicious schadenfreude of Burning Man

If any readers are having those September, back-to-work blues perhaps I might offer them a sure-fire palliative? Just go online and watch videos of this year’s Burning Man. For anyone who doesn’t know, Burning Man is a week-long festival of music and ‘self-expression’ which takes place in the Nevada desert. It is especially popular among libertarians and Silicon Valley types. Think Glastonbury, if you must. Like the Somerset atrocity, it is a place where people pay huge sums of money to take drugs and imagine that they have had some unique insight into the world. Often they come away believing that if only all of life could be like this,

Tuesday

Edward Howell

The unholy alliance between Kim Jong-un and Putin

On 27 July, while commemorating the 70th anniversary of what North Korea perversely terms its ‘victory’ in the Korean war, Kim Jong-un proudly gave a guided tour of his intercontinental ballistic missiles, drones and missile engines. The lucky visitor was none other than Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. Later that day, Shoigu stood next to the Supreme Leader as they watched North Korea’s rockets paraded across Kim Il Sung square.   Now it seems that Shoigu’s visit – the first time a Russian defence minister had come to North Korea since the collapse of the Soviet Union – has paid off. Today, it has been reported that Kim Jong-un is preparing to travel

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What France’s rugby racism row reveals about the French left

Emmanuel Macron spent Monday morning in the presence of the French rugby team and for once he spoke without ambiguity. ‘You are the best prepared team in the world,’ he told them at their training camp south of Paris. ‘You’ll be brothers in arms, fighting from the first minute to the last. The team is bigger than you, just as the nation is bigger than any one of us. Make us proud, make us happy.’  France are indeed the bookmakers’ favourites for the Rugby World Cup, the tournament they are hosting for the first time since 2007. On that occasion, they were similarly confident going into the competition, only to

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is China still a Confucian country?

29 min listen

For thousands of years, Confucianism has run through the fabric of Chinese society, politics and culture. Decades of Communism has taken its toll on China, so can it still be considered a Confucian country? Joining the episode is one of the world’s leading experts on the philosophy, Professor Daniel Bell. In 2017, he was appointed the dean of Shandong University, an unusual appointment for a foreigner in China but one based on his expertise in Confucianism, in the province of Confucius’s birth. His new book, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese university, details some of the ups and downs of his time in that

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Silicon Valley’s curious obsession with building old-fashioned communities 

It’s a peculiar thing about billionaires: they don’t half have a weak spot for building ideal communities from the ground up. You could call it pluto-utopianism. The latest manifestation of this is California Forever. A number of ultra-wealthy Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs have been quietly buying up 55,000 acres of farmland in Solano county, California, and at the end of last week they launched a website revealing what they planned to do with it. Behold, the future of rural America: a new community rising from the empty earth, the vision for which is set out in a series of watercolour-style illustrations.   Here is a version of that anxiety transmitted into town-planning: a sudden burst of

Sunday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China’s ‘standard map’ is a chilling reminder of its imperial ambitions

The Chinese Communist Party’s ‘standard map’ is updated each year to include Beijing’s ever-extending territorial claims. Neighbours see it as a sinister measure of Beijing’s imperialist threat, but to the party it is a sacred document, a badge of legitimacy, encapsulating its historic grievances and its growing ambition. It must be faithfully reproduced in school textbooks and in government and corporate handouts and plastered to the walls of workplaces and classrooms.  The timing of the latest edition is unfortunate – or perhaps deliberate – coming just ahead of next week’s summit of G20 countries in Delhi, a meeting that President Xi Jinping intends to snub. It seemed to send a

Saturday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Will Paris’s ban stop e-scooters killing people?

Rental e-scooters have been banned from Paris since Friday after residents of the French capital were asked to decide their fate in a referendum. The vote, held in April, attracted a low turnout, with only 103,000 of the city’s 1.38 million men and women bothering to cast their ballot. Of those that did, however, 90 per cent voted to rid their streets of rental scooters. Rental scooters were first introduced onto the streets of Paris five years ago amid much fanfare. They were, claimed the company responsible, California-based Lime, the environmentally-friendly future. ‘Very quickly our fleet will grow to respond to demand,’ claimed Lime’s director for France, Arthur-Louis Jacquier. As Parisians

Robert Service

The Pope is wrong about Russian imperial greatness

Popes may make claims to infallibility but they certainly make mistakes, and Pope Francis is likely to get a dressing down in heaven from his predecessor-but-one, John Paul II, for what he has now said about Russian imperial greatness. What Kyiv least needs at the moment is a blundering intervention by a well-meaning Argentinian who speaks with the supreme authority of the Holy See John Paul was born and baptised in Poland before the second world war and rose to become Archbishop of Kraków before being elected to the Papacy. He had spent decades under communist rule and experienced the brutal ways of Soviet imperialism. He knew his Russian history.

Friday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Ukrainian pupils face an impossible dilemma

Today, almost five million Ukrainian pupils have gone to school – in person or remotely. Most didn’t have festive assemblies with flowers, songs and first graders reciting poems by heart, as they would have done before the war. The first of September doesn’t feel like a day to celebrate anymore. Today, every third child in Ukraine stayed at home – schools that could not build bomb shelters or are in the 60-mile danger zone from the frontline have not been allowed to reopen. These precautions are in place as gatherings of Ukrainians, even children, can attract Russian missiles and drones. Lockdown demonstrated, starkly, the detrimental effects of ‘home learning’. Screens

Robin Ashenden

What Brits don’t understand about life in Russia

When I tell people in England I’ve just returned from several years abroad and they find out the country was Russia, it is a real conversation stopper. Their minds short-circuit, they seem to gulp in front of you. What question do they ask next? Do they mention the war? Talk about Tolstoy? ‘Ah… Interesting,’ one woman said to me finally, as though looking at someone’s awful etchings and wanting to be polite. ‘That must have been…difficult for you,’ said another. How can I get across to them that, before February last year, it might have been ‘interesting’ but wasn’t difficult at all? It’s depressing when a country you have warm memories

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Why Iranians don’t hate Israel

One is an oppressive regime that guns down its own people, promotes a radical Islamist theology and hangs gay people from cranes. The other is a liberal democracy that protects the rights of minorities, upholds the freedoms of speech and assembly, and grants equality to women and gay people. Yet when weightlifters from the two countries shook hands after a tournament, it was the oppressive regime that reacted with fury. Courage is readily found among Iranian sportspeople, as it is found among the Iranian people themselves I speak, of course, of Iran and Israel. Such is the intensity of the Israelophobia at the heart of the Islamic republic that when

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Next Defence Secretary: runners and riders

Parliament is back next week and with that comes the resumption of the age old game of ‘Who’s up, who’s down?’ One name we know who is heading for the exit is Ben Wallace, who has handed his resignation before he can enjoy a last victory lap at the party conference. The Ministry of Defence has long been regarded as a plum position for Tory ministers, so it’s no surprise that there’s no shortage of contenders for the role. One government insider is quoted as saying in this week’s Spectator that they want a candidate who is ‘efficient, non-flashy, loyal, decent.’ That rules out Penny Mordaunt then. Mr S runs

Ben Domenech

Will Senator Mitch McConnell step down after his latest freezing episode?

Senator Mitch McConnell appeared to have another elderly moment in Kentucky following an event yesterday, where a question about whether he would run for re-election in 2026 left him silent as the cameras tracked the awkward scene. It is obviously not the first time that this has happened for McConnell — and the eighty-one-year-old deserves the grace that we would grant to anyone struggling with the inevitability of age. But this is also a moment that presents a challenge for the Republican party, an effort that is larger than just one man (despite what diehard fans of Donald Trump would sometimes have you believe), and one that Senate Minority Leader

Wednesday

Nicholas Sheppard

New Zealand’s election spells trouble for Hipkins’ Labour party

New Zealand’s parliament adjourns this week, officially kicking off six weeks of political campaigning ahead of a general election on 14 October. But it seems that Chris Hipkins and his Labour party might find it difficult to maintain their grip on power.  Persistently high food prices at the supermarket, and a string of cabinet mishaps have seen a waning in support for Hipkins’ Labour government. For the first time, he has found himself on a level pegging with Christopher Luxon, the leader of the National party, in the race to become prime minister. Several weeks ago, a poll conducted by pollsters Taxpayers’ Union-Curia, revealed support for the Labour government stood at

Ian Williams Ian Williams

James Cleverly is clueless on China

At least James Cleverly had somebody to meet. The Foreign Secretary’s last effort to get to Beijing was postponed after his Chinese counterpart disappeared in late June. Former foreign minister Qin Gang has not been seen or heard of since. Gang’s whereabouts are as mysterious as Cleverly’s China policy, which is beginning to feel a lot like a re-tread of the incoherent and failed past strategy of ‘engagement’. That policy, as far as it can be described as one, was driven by greed and gullibility. It added up to little more than kowtowing to Beijing, largely ignoring its growing repression at home and aggression overseas, while at the same time